Johann Heinrich Knack (son of Wolff Heinrich Knack from Calbach and his wife Anna Dorothea) was baptized in Büdingen on 2 June 1746. Maria Magdalena Seitz (daughter of Ernst Peter Seitz) was born in Langen-Bergheim on 31 December 1742 and baptized in Eckartshausen on 4 January 1743. Johann Heinrich and Maria Magdalena married in Büdingen on 12 February 1767. The couple had two children, both born in Calbach and baptized in Büdingen: Johann Friedrich, born 27 March and baptized 31 March 1768; and Johannes, born 3 July 1770 and baptized 8 July 1770.
The family arrived in Russia on 17 July 1772. The Transport List notes that Magdalena gave birth to a daughter on 19 September 1772, and also notes that Johannes was buried on 14 August 1772. Along with other families who also arrived in July and August of 1772, they travelled to the the Volga German colonies, settling in Pobochnaya in 1773.
Widow Magdalena Knack is reported in the 1798 Pobochnaya Census in Household #5, along with her sons and their families. Another son is reported in the Samuel Schneider household (Household #2).
- Parish records of Büdingen on Archion.de
- Parish records of Eckartshausen (including Langen-Bergheim, Wiedermus, Ronneburg, and Himbach) on Archion.de
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Einige Kapitel aus der Geschichte des Kolonisationsprojekts von Katharina II. 1763-1775 (Moscow: Andreas Idt, Georg Rauschenbach, 2021): pp. 392 and 407
- Rye, Richard, translator. 1772 and 1798 Census of Pobochnaya (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1995)
